Now it's gone viral, landing in the top 20 trending videos on YouTube, as of the afternoon of Wednesday, June 19.

“There’s no excuse for this,” host Trevor Noah said. “There’s no excuse. Unless maybe the cop says he arrests people in the way that he thinks that they speak. Maybe he’s like, 'Yo, black man, get your ass on the ground. And as for you, ese, you better stop acting like a pendejo. And you, Belgian guy, I don’t know how you speak. Waffles, waffles waffles.'”

That was about as funny as it got. Noah dispensed with comedy for the most part, instead substituting outrage.

Well, maybe there was a little more humor.

“I’m sorry, guys, you don’t need to show up like a SWAT team to rescue a Barbie from a little girl,” Noah said. “If anything, you should be rescuing the little girl from the Barbie. You should be getting there like, little girl watch out, that Barbie can give you a warped sense of what a woman’s body is supposed to be!”

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Noah showed the video of officers outside the parked car of Dravon Ames, 22, along with his pregnant fiancée, Iesha Harper, 24, and their 1- and 4-year old daughters. Ames has said that the 4-year-old had taken a doll from a store earlier; Phoenix police have confirmed they were investigating a shoplifting incident. The family alleges police pointed a gun at their children, threatened them and physically harmed Ames and their daughter because the child took a doll from a dollar store.

No matter how you slice it, the video is ugly, with officers threatening the family.

Iesha Harper and Dravon Ames and their two children.(Photo: Courtesy of the Ames-Harper family)

“You would think that cops cursing at civilians and pointing guns at a 4-year-old child would be as bad as the story could get,” Noah said. “But what makes it even worse is that if we didn’t have these videos, those cops would have been able to paint a very different picture of how this all went down.”

“You know what’s most troubling about this,” he continued, “is that it makes you wonder how many people have been arrested and put in jail because everyone assumes the police version of events is always the truth. Time and time again, cellphone videos contradict the official reports.’”

“You know what’s sad about this story is that as harrowing as it was, this family is one of the lucky ones,” he said. “Because none of them was shot, and calm bystanders recorded the whole thing to back them up. And now their lawyer is helping them sue that police department for $10 million. Which won’t help erase what happened to them, but it will help that little girl buy a (expletive) of those dolls.”

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A Phoenix couple is demanding $10 million from the city of Phoenix after they say officers used excessive force and threatened to shoot them.
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